Caturday felids: videos!

Nothing fancy this week: I am still enervated from my illness and the onslaught of (Dr.)3 Pigliucci. Instead, I offer a few videos I’ve been saving up.

You might be familiar with the famous Simon’s Cat animation “Cat Man Do,” in which a wily felid awakes his owner. Well, here’s the real Simon’s cat. It’s 6 hours and 19 minutes of fun compressed into a single minute. That cat wants his noms!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Speaking of hungry cats, here are two more. One desperately wants his cake:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

while the other is satisfied with a moist, raw spud:

In May, four Amur tigers were born at the Denver Zoo. Here’s one getting his checkup (20 seconds in): look how stoically he takes a thermometer up the butt. My fondest wish is to pet a baby tiger before I die. The Brookfield Zoo actually had some, but when I made a grovelling request, I was denied with talk about insurance and the like. It was intimated, however, that if I were willing to donate big bucks to the Zoo. . . . Any readers out there with access to baby tigers?

That groveling request was awhile ago, right? You’re Mr Best-seller Top 50 books in Newsweek guy now – maybe you could trade a talk for a cub-session. Srsly. Zoos have education departments; I bet they’d love to have you do a talk. Sniff out zoos with cubs and ask them.

I got to pet an adult tiger once. Should I mention that she was sedated at the time?
Long ago I worked for a vet in NC. (late 80’s?) One weekend, we spayed a tiger. She was from Carnivore Preservation Trust in Pittsboro, NC. (It’s now called Carolina Tiger Rescue). Michael Bleyman used to bring in the coolest animals.
The tiger wasn’t to be used for breeding any longer and her implant wasn’t effective anymore. So we spayed her.

No need to spend big bucks on that. There are LOTS of tigers running around the United States. Self-styled wildlife shows turn up at every mall in backwoods America. They probably avoid Chicago, but we got to pet tiger cubs in the Marion IL mall a few years ago for about $10.